Gold fell 1.7% from Monday's attempt at 6-week highs of $1300 per ounce, trading down at $1278 as silver fell over twice as hard, down to 8-week lows at $16.44.

Platinum prices held firm again, unchanged from last week's finish at $941 per ounce.

Crude oil rose meantime towards this month's 2.5-year highs at $64 per barrel of Brent after the Opec cartel of major producers, meeting in Vienna, said they're
ready to extend a cap on output to the end of 2018.

Major government bond prices edged lower with gold, nudging 10-year US Treasury yields up to 2-week highs at 2.39%.

But South African and London-listed gold miners added 0.5% as a group for the day by lunchtime, as Harmony (JSE:HAR) jumped 2.3% following the
re-start of work at its Hidden Valley project in Papua New Guinea two weeks ahead of schedule.

Euro priced gold meantime fell back near its cheapest level since early August at EUR 1081 per ounce.

Gold priced in Australian Dollars meantime erased this week's earlier 1.1% gain, but held within 9% of mid-2016's return to the all-time record highs of mid-2011.

With the
Australian Dollar falling over 30% against the US Dollar since 2011, gold mining costs in the world's No.2 producer have fallen sharply compared to other countries', with annual output rising by more than one-tenth.

Over the first half of this year Australia's average mining costs rose 3% per ounce, driven mostly by a rally in the AUD's exchange rate according to specialist analysts Thomson Reuters GFMS, but its total "all in sustaining costs" still held below the global average.

Today the ASX stock exchange in
Sydney opened trading in Canada-based Kirkland Lake Gold (TSX:KL), now operating a quarter-million ounce mine in the east of Australia and one of 25 listed companies exploring the nugget-rich edge of the western Pilbara region.

"In the past year," says Mining Weekly, "a record 1,896 gold prospecting licenses were granted by the Western Australia Department of Mines," mostly to individual prospectors using metal detectors.

"The Pilbara will be
the next big thing or we'll be looking back in 12 months saying, 'Oh, that was interesting and that's all'," says Joe Treacy of Australian gold explorer Marindi Metals.

BMI expects the growth to come from mining companies in China -- now the No.1 producer since 2007 -- as they buy and expand new projects overseas in a bid to meet the country's growing consumer demand for the metal.

Adrian Ash is director of research at BullionVault, the physical gold and silver market for private investors online. Formerly head of editorial at London's top publisher of private-investment advice, he was City correspondent for The Daily Reckoning from 2003 to 2008, and is now a regular contributor to many leading analysis sites including Forbes and a regular guest on BBC national and international radio and television news. Adrian's views on the gold market have been sought by the Financial Times and Economist magazine in London; CNBC, Bloomberg and TheStreet.com in New York; Germany's Der Stern; Italy's Il Sole 24 Ore, and many other respected finance publications.

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